Chapter XC: HEADS OR TAILS
De balena vero sufficit, si rex habeat caput, et regina
caudam. Bracton, l 3. c. 3. Latin from the books of the Laws of
England, which taken along with the context, means, that of all whales
captured by anybody on the coast of that land, the King, as Honorary
Grand Harpooneer, must have the head, and the Queen be respectfully
presented with the tail. A division which, in the whale, is much like
halving an apple; there is no intermediate remainder. Now as this
law, under a modified form, is to this day in force in England; and as
it offers in various respects a strange anomaly touching the general
law of Fast and Loose-Fish, it is here treated of in a separate
chapter, on the same courteous principle that prompts the English
railways to be at the expense of a separate car, specially reserved
for the accommodation of royalty. In the first place, in curious
proof of the fact that the above-mentioned law is still in force, I
proceed to lay before you a circumstance that happened within the last
two years. It seems that some honest mariners of Dover, or Sandwich,
or some one of the Cinque Ports, had after a hard chase succeeded in
killing and beaching a fine whale which they had originally descried
afar off from the shore. Now the Cinque Ports are partially or
somehow under the jurisdiction of a sort of policeman or beadle,
called a Lord Warden. Holding the office directly from the crown, I
believe, all the royal emoluments incident to the Cinque Port
territories become by assignment his. By some writers this office is
called a sinecure. But not so. Because the Lord Warden is busily
employed at times in fobbing his perquisites; which are his chiefly by
virtue of that same fobbing of them. Now when these poor sun-burnt
mariners, bare-footed, and with their trowsers rolled high up on their
eely legs, had wearily hauled their fat fish high and dry, promising
themselves a good 150 pounds from the precious oil and bone; and in
fantasy sipping rare tea with their wives, and good ale with their
cronies, upon the strength of their respective shares; up steps a very
learned and most Christian and charitable gentleman, with a copy of
Blackstone under his arm; and laying it upon the whale's head, he says
-- Hands off! this fish, my masters, is a Fast-Fish. I seize it as
the Lord Warden's. Upon this the poor mariners in their respectful
consternation --so truly English --knowing not what to say, fall to
vigorously scratching their heads all round; meanwhile ruefully
glancing from the whale to the stranger. But that did in nowise mend
the matter, or at all soften the hard heart of the learned gentleman
with the copy of Blackstone. At length one of them, after long
scratching about for his ideas, made bold to speak. Please, sir, who
is the Lord Warden? The Duke. But the duke had nothing to do with
taking this fish? It is his. We have been at great trouble, and
peril, and some expense, and is all that to go to the Duke's benefit;
we getting nothing at all for our pains but our blisters? It is
his. Is the duke so very poor as to be forced to this desperate mode
of getting a livelihood? It is his. I thought to relieve my old
bed-ridden mother by part of my share of this whale. It is his. Won't
the Duke be content with a quarter or a half? It is his. In a word,
the whale was seized and sold, and his Grace the Duke of Wellington
received the money. Thinking that viewed in some particular lights,
the case might by a bare possibility in some small degree be deemed,
under the circumstances, a rather hard one, an honest clergyman of the
town respectfully addressed a note to his Grace, begging him to take
the case of those unfortunate mariners into full consideration. To
which my Lord Duke in substance replied (both letters were published)
that he had already done so, and received the money, and would be
obliged to the reverend gentleman if for the future he (the reverend
gentleman) would decline meddling with other people's business.
Is this the still militant old man, standing at the corners of the
three kingdoms, on all hands coercing alms of beggars? It will
readily be seen that in this case the alleged right of the Duke to the
whale was a delegated one from the Sovereign. We must needs inquire
then on what principle the Sovereign is originally invested with that
right. The law itself has already been set forth. But Plowdon gives
us the reason for it. Says Plowdon, the whale so caught belongs to
the King and Queen, because of its superior excellence. And by the
soundest commentators this has ever been held a cogent argument in
such matters. But why should the King have the head, and the Queen
the tail? A reason for that, ye lawyers! In his treatise on
Queen-Gold, or Queen-pinmoney, an old King's Bench author, one William
Prynne, thus discourseth: Ye tail is ye Queen's, that ye Queen's
wardrobe may be supplied with ye whalebone. Now this was written at a
time when the black limber bone of the Greenland or Right whale was
largely used in ladies' bodices. But this same bone is not in the
tail; it is in the head, which is a sad mistake for a sagacious lawyer
like Prynne. But is the Queen a mermaid, to be presented with a tail?
An allegorical meaning may lurk here. There are two royal fish so
styled by the English law writers -- the whale and the sturgeon; both
royal property under certain limitations, and nominally supplying the
tenth branch of the crown's ordinary revenue. I know not that any
other author has hinted of the matter; but by inference it seems to me
that the sturgeon must be divided in the same way as the whale, the
King receiving the highly dense and elastic head peculiar to that
fish, which, symbolically regarded, may possibly be humorously
grounded upon some presumed congeniality. And thus there seems a
reason in all things, even in law.